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Too much access
“... It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges..."
[John Schwartz, "As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up," New York Times (03.17.2009)]Unless a court is willing to impose the expensive, unpopular, and rare sequestration option, where jurors may be effectively relieved of their blackberries, iPhones, and other Web ready handheld devices, the notion of justice being blind and jurors withdrawing from all forms of public information (as a monk might do) seems ever more obsolete in the 24/7 full access world we live in today ... Continue reading
The opportunities that libraries missed
Peter Murray-Rust, of the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge, looks at the opportunities that libraries missed. This is a must-read. He says that Libraries once had a central role in guiding scholarship but that neither Libraries nor Librarians do anymore. He traces this decline to "two major missed opportunities where, if we had had real guaradians of scholarship we would not be in the current mess - running scared of publishers and lawyers."
- The library of the future - Guardian of Scholarship?, by Peter Murray Rust, petermr’s blog, March 19th, 2009.
So, simply, the librarian of the future must be a revolutionary. They may or may not be Librarians. If Librarians are not revolutionaries they have little future.Continue reading
Hacking Congress .org
Josh Tauberer has set up a new site, HackingCongress.org, meant to be "the intersection of civics & technology." Josh invites you to create an account so you can participate and edit any content on the site. "It's basically a new wiki," he says.
HackingCongress is a new hub for projects at the intersection of civics & technology, fostering civic engagement and education, advancing government transparency, and supporting communication with government. ("Hacking" has a dual meaning in the computer world and in this case it is positive slang for creative programming.) The focus of this site is on projects related to the U.S. Congress and state-level legislatures. The goal is to be a hub, or at least a links page, for the developer community surrounding the intersection of civics and technology especially (but not exclusively) as it relates to the U.S. Congress. Create an account and start editing pages. Make sure your project is listed with a description you like, and add any other relevant projects, data sources, and APIs to the appropriate pages.There is already a lot there: Then beginnings of a list of the databases and APIs that are available for government transparency data; Links to ongoing projects broken down by type; An aggregator of of blogs in the open government tech community, planet.hackingcongress.org. ...and more! Continue reading
Online Sunshine Week Event: Opening Doors: Finding the Keys to Open Government
On Friday, March 20, 2009, 1 - 2:30 PM (EDT), OpenTheGovernment.org will present a free webcast of a panel discussion at The Center for American Progress.
The event will feature a discussion between speakers and the audience on what the Obama administration hopes to achieve, the policy issues facing this administration, the Obama administration's vision for e-government, and financial and economic transparency. Also during the event, Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org and Ari Schwartz, Vice President of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) will release a report based on the results of Show Us the Data, a web-based survey used to discover what information the public wants to get access to and use, but cannot. Confirmed Speakers: Dan Chenok, a member of President Obama's "Technology, Innovation and Government Reform" transition team, former branch chief for information policy and technology in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and currently senior vice president and general manager of Pragmatics, Katherine McFate, a Program Officer for Government Performance and Accountability in the Ford Foundation's Governance Unit, and Beth Noveck, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and author of Wiki Government (Brookings 2009). Invited: Vivek Kundra, newly-appointed federal Chief Information Officer (CIO).To view the webcast live on your personal computer, no pre-registration is required. Simply go to this page: Opening Doors: Finding the Keys to Open Government, where a URL will be available about 24 hours prior to the event. Continue reading
The danger of Kindle
Emily Walshe, a librarian and professor at Long Island University in New York, writes about the Kindle e-book reader.
- Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought, by Emily Walshem, Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2009.
In our rush to adopt new technologies, we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of its twisted sister, access.... You're not buying a book; you're buying access to a book. No, it's not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It's like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property.Continue reading
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